


The Smell is the Worst Part

by Malcolm Reynolds (FanficbyLee)



Category: Firefly, Serenity
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-08
Updated: 2006-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:29:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficbyLee/pseuds/Malcolm%20Reynolds





	The Smell is the Worst Part

Title: The Smell is the Worst Part  
Author: [](http://sanguinepen.livejournal.com/profile)[**sanguinepen**](http://sanguinepen.livejournal.com/)  
Character: Mal  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Spoilers: Battle of Serenity Stuff  
Prompt: #2 – Blood 4/100  
Rating: Work Safe  
Word Count: 581

  
It were the smell that bothered most of the living, but it was the sounds of ragged breathing of the dying that bothered me the most. Would’ve lost track of time if we couldn’t be counting it by the bodies that piled up daily, so many died and so many wished that they would. The Battle of Serenity Valley had been over for more than a week, but still no one came. We were so hungry, that I recon we’d be turning Reaver any time soon. I could see that crazed hungry look in more than a few of the troop’s eyes. I didn’t blame them none neither. This was no way to die, not when we’d fought so gorram hard to live. I weren’t sure who I was angrier with – the Alliance for winning or the Independents for rolling over like a dog and giving up the fight.

Besides me Zoe was bleeding from more than a few superficial wounds, just like I was. The flies were buzzing around us in a thick cloud that got thicker the closer you got to the corpses we’d piled up across the way. We’d have taken ‘em further if we had known that we’d be here for so long, but now we was all too tired to lift ourselves let alone the dead weight of so many. I was already carrying the weight of their souls on my shoulders, and it were dragging me down like I had an entire planet on me smashing me flat like a bug.

So many were gone, so many had given their lives for the freedom we were never going to have now that the Independents had given up. So many mothers and fathers would never know what happened to their children, because the history would be written by the winners, and no one would know that we’d been left behind not to die in a fair fight but because no one gave a damn about fetching us and taking us home. How many children were huddled back at their homesteads wondering why daddy or mommy hadn’t come home? Why hadn’t they gotten a wave in so long? What had happened on Hera?

The pain was like a living thing curling and twisting like a snarling lizard in my soul eating away at my sanity and at the need for survival that had always pulled me through. I was beginning to hope that a stray bullet would catch me in the head, and put me outta my misery, but none ever came. The cease fire had destroyed any chance of a lucky hit or unlucky in my book. Luck never did seem to stay with me for long. But suffering was covering me now like a thick wooly blanket that didn’t block none of the cold that were making me shiver so.

The light was going out in Zoe’s eyes when we finally heard them coming. Someone behind some desk someplace on some core planet in the Alliance finally remembered to come and get us. We’d survived the worst battle in the War for Independence, but would we be allowed to live? What would happen to us now? Would we be forced into slavery for some corporation that kept the parliament in power? Or would we be allowed to go on our way with our dignity battered, bruised, but still intact? I was still wondering that when I stumbled into the medship arm in arm with Zoe.

Please join [](http://joss-roundrobin.livejournal.com/profile)[**joss_roundrobin**](http://joss-roundrobin.livejournal.com/) for shared fanfic in Joss' Verse....


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